Iowa View: Health care comes with responsibility

3:04 AM,
Dec. 15, 2013

Written by

Charles Bruner

Iowa, a purple state, has reached an agreement with the federal administration on a form of Medicaid expansion that doubtless will be spun in different political ways.

At its heart, Iowa's approach was developed as a bipartisan compromise that would cover up to 150,000 Iowans whose income is below 138 percent of the poverty level, with some new stipulations to promote not only health coverage but healthy behaviors.

Described in partisan terms, Democrats wanted to expand a comprehensive set of health benefits to those who, because of lack of resources or private health coverage, did not ...